NOTE: Not to be confused with Windows 7 Firewall Control, that is a completely separate entity - both from this program and Windows Firewall.

NOTE: This is just to make it clear: The free version of WFC will not provide any form of notification regarding network access at all.What it will give you is an easy way to add and edit Windows Firewall rules.The paid version will add access notifications.

Contact via form at Binisoft and the author is also active at this Wilders Security Forum thread, (as alexandrud).

Upgrade Policy

Lifetime license, (as in all future updates), for US$10 donation.

Trial Version Available?

There is a Free and a Paid version, the Free version lacks the following:

Learning Mode, which displays notifications about blocked outgoing connections, with detailed information about these connections, and which permit the user to "Allow Always" or "Block Permanently" a program that was blocked by Windows Firewall. From version 3.0.1.2. this feature is available for all language localisation.

Lock the current configuration of the program with a password. Useful if you don't want other users to alter program settings. This will disable the access to the shortcut from Control Panel for Windows Firewall and the Management Console snap-in control file that provides additional administration capabilities for Windows Firewall.

Reset a forgotten password used to lock the current state of the program.

None. I downloaded the Free version, liked what it did and donated to get the extra functions of the Paid version.

Introduction:

"Windows Firewall Control is a nifty little application which extends the functionality of the Windows Firewall and provides quick access to the most frequent options of Windows Firewall. It runs in the system tray and allows user to control the native firewall easily without having to waste time by navigating to the specific part of the firewall. This is the best tool to manage the native firewall from Windows 7 and Windows Vista."

The above is straight from the website and in my opinion it's pretty well spot-on.

Who is this app designed for:

Anyone who wants a bit more control over the default Windows Vista/7 firewall without resorting to a completely separate firewall solution.

Installation:

WFC is compatible with all 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Requirements:

Microsoft .NET Framework version 4.0

The following Windows services are required to be enabled for Windows Firewall Control to run:

"Windows Firewall"

"TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper"

"Workstation"

"DNS Client"

The file is downloaded as a single file executable, when you run it you will be presented with the License Agreement, (EULA), which you can accept or reject. Acceptance will take you to the main installation window where you can choose some basic options to start with:

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

When you click the Install button, a service and a GUI component will be installed to the install directory you chose, (default is C:\Program Files\Windows Firewall Control). The files are wfcs.exe and wfc.exe respectively.

The service will be added and set to Automatic Start, a shortcut will be added to All Programs->Startup for the GUI component.

It will then run and you'll end up with an icon in your System Tray.

NOTE: Once installation has completed, the installer will be deleted - it becomes the GUI program so you can find it in C:\Program Files\Windows Firewall Control.

Operation:

WFC adds rules directly to the inbuilt Windows Firewall, this means that you can exit WFC or uninstall it and those rules will still be active within Windows Firewall until you delete them, (whether as part of the uninstall or through Windows Firewall Advanced Settings), or disable Windows Firewall.

A right or left click the SysTray icon will open the GUI, clicking outside the GUI will close it.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Common to all tabs are the following buttons:At the top right you have two buttons - the first locks the interface with a password to stop anyone else from changing your configuration. This also stops access to Windows Firewall via the Control Panel.The second causes the WFC GUI to exit however the service still runs in the background, you just won't get any notifications under Learning mode if registered.

At the bottom right you have four buttons you can use to add programs to Windows Firewall Allow/Block rules, from left to right:

1) Browse for a program to allow through the firewall.

2) Select a program window to allow a program through the firewall.

3) Browse for a program to block a program from connecting through the firewall.

4) Select a program window to block a program from connecting through the firewall.

Selecting either 1 or 3 will open a file browser so you can choose a program to allow or block.Selecting 2 or 4 will allow you to click on a programs interface to allow or block it.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

The last is the Manage Rules button - I'll get to that later.

Profiles tab - you have four profiles to choose from, they are pretty self-explanatory:

High Filtering - All outgoing connections are blocked whether there is a rule or not. Stops all communication from your computer.

Medium Filtering - Any connection for which no rule is present is blocked. Learning Mode only works when this profile is active.

Low Filtering - Any connection for which there is no rule is allowed. ie. You create rules only for those programs you want to block.

No Filtering - The Windows Firewall is turned OFF, ie. ALL connections are allowed. Windows Security Center will immediately complain that the firewall is off.

Options tab - this is where you can choose to enable Learning Mode, Shell Integration and the option to start the GUI when Windows starts.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Learning Mode is only available to registered users and causes an alert to open whenever a new program tries to access the network, more later.

Enable notifications for system applications will cause you to get notifications for System and svchost when they try to connect, unchecking will cause them to be ignored.

Shell Integration adds two entries to the right-click context menu of Explorer letting you Allow or Block programs without having to use the file browser, select the interface or wait for a Learning Mode alert.

Start with Windows starts the GUI program when a user logs on.

Policies tab - here you can Export, Import or Restore the default Windows firewall rules. The Default rules are those that were created when Windows was installed - any rules you created after that will be deleted.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Shortcuts tab - has three shortcuts to Windows Firewall with Advanced Security, Event Viewer and the CLI.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

About tab - provides information about the program, check for a new version and register the program.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Learning Mode: This is similar to most other firewall programs, ie. when a new program tries to access the network a requester opens asking whether you want to give it access or not.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

The requester gives you the name of the originating program, Source IP:port, Remote IP:port, Protocol, whether the program is signed and allows you to create a rule to Allow or Block it from this moment on or to just Block it this time, in which case you'll get an alert next time it tries to connect.

The program name is a clickable link that will open Windows Explorer at the container directory.Clicking on the Remote IP will open a WhoIs request in your default browser using the Remote IP as the argument, allowing you to check where the connection was going, as shown below.

Starting with versions 3.3.0.1 you have the option to add a temporary rule, (eg. for a setup program), that will be removed the next time WFC is run.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Temporary rules will show up in the Rule List as follows:

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Manage Rules:

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

The columns can be clicked on for sorting and the colour coding of rules is as follows:White background: Disabled rules, (No in the Enabled column).Green background: An enabled Allow rule.Red background: An enabled Block rule.

You can select rules by clicking on them and also multi-select by drag, shift or control.

Starting at the top of the Actions list, (right hand side):Refresh rules list: Self-explanatory.Find invalid rules: Searches for rules that have no associated executable, eg. you uninstalled a program but the rule still exists. This will auto-select all invalid rules and show the total number in brackets next to the Delete Rule action as shown below, you can then click Delete Rule button to remove them.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

Under the Display actions, you can choose to display All, Inbound and Outbound rules and also filter by Enabled and Disabled rules. You can also search for a rule, eg. typing in dopus.exe will highlight the rule for Directory Opus if it exists.

The Create New Rule actions are the same as the main program interface:

1) Browse to allow.

2) Click to allow.

3) Browse to block.

4) Click to block.

Selecting either 1 or 3 will open a file browser so you can choose a program executable to allow or block.Selecting 2 or 4 will allow you to click on a programs interface to allow or block it.

The Options are only enabled when there is at least one rule highlighted:Allow rule: Will be enabled if you have a block rule highlighted, this will allow you to toggle the rules action from blocking network access to allowing it.Block Rule: Will be enabled if you have a allow rule highlighted, this will allow you to toggle the rules action from allowing network access to blocking it.Enable Rule: Allows you to enable a disabled rule.Disable Rule: Allows you to disable an enabled rule.Delete Rule: Deletes selected rules.Properties: Opens the rule properties allowing you to modify them, the same as double-clicking on a rule.

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

From here you can edit the Ports, Protocol, Remote IP, Profile (Domain, Private, Public) and add a Description if needed.

Uninstalling

Windows Firewall Control - Mini Review

If you uninstall WFC at a later date it will ask you to either:

restore the default Windows Firewall rules, (those in effect when Windows was first installed),

restore the rules that were active before you installed WFC, or

not delete any rules at all, (whether created by WFC or not).

How does it compare to similar apps

There are two similar programs available, (that I know of), both of them are fully free, (no paid versions):

You can activate our products on all PC's from your home, for unlimited times.

You will be registered user for all future versions of our programs.

You will never receive emails regarding eventual upgrades, patches releases, special offers and so on.

You will support us to continue the improvement of our programs.

Reading that, you can use the program on all PC's in your home and you get all future upgrades for free.Registering WFC will also let you unlock the registered features of their other program(s), (eg. USB Flash Drives Control) - ala Donation Coder's license.I can attest to having received no emails ever since registering WFC - not even for upgrades. The only two ways to find out are the Check for Upgrades within the program or to check the forum thread at Wilders for possible betas.

PS. Sorry if this mini-review isn't up to scratch, in depth analysis is not my forte. To paraphrase: "I'm a user, not a reviewer."

Every time I went back to adding a bit more to this the program would have been updated, so a couple of the grabs are from different versions.

There is also a third program, (other than TinyWall and WFN), that works a similar way but I cannot remember the name of it - I do know it only came out in the last 2-3 months so if I happen to find it again, I'll add it above.

Registered Users Features√ Learning Mode which provides notifications for blocked outgoing connections.√ Lock the current state of the program and Windows Firewall with password.√ Reset a forgotten password used to lock the current state of the program.

There is also a third program, (other than TinyWall and WFN), that works a similar way but I cannot remember the name of it - I do know it only came out in the last 2-3 months so if I happen to find it again, I'll add it above.

Well, prompted by your review, and after a bit of hasty trialling today, so far I have tried these out:

1. Windows7 Firewall Control (FREE version):Been using this for a while now. I reckon it's very good. Probably dead simple to use for most users. My installation was uninstalled nice and easy by the PAID (nagware) version install.

2. Windows7 Firewall Control (PAID nagware version): Just quickly tried this out today. Bit more complicated to use (more options/decisions to take) than the FREE version. Uninstalls nice and easy.

3. TinyWall: I just quickly tried this out today. Probably a bit complicated to use for many users (more options/decisions to take). Not sure I like it (does not seem to be very intuitive). Devil of a job to uninstall. I think it left some damage judging by the state of my firewall just now, which I am still fixing as I write this. Maybe it was attributable to my ignorance/misuse of the thing.

4. Windows Firewall Notifier: Not a firewall control per se, but a useful notification tool. Probably a bit complicated to use for many users (more options/decisions to take). In use is annoying as heck and does not seem to be very intuitive. Uninstalls relatively easily via brute force.

5. Windows Firewall Control: Just quickly tried this out today. It seemed to silently install on my system - no evidence that anything had happened, though it was self-aware enough to ask me to change the filename back to wfc.exe before installing. I think the install file may have been corrupted, or something - didn't appear to do anything - and then I later noticed that it was there. Seemed like it could be a useful notification/control tool. Probably a bit too complicated to use for many users (more options/decisions to take). In use is annoying and does not seem to be very intuitive. Uninstalled it.EDIT: Just discovered I had an old version (v3.1.0.3) of Windows Firewall Control. Latest version is v3.3.0.1.

Ended up by:

(a) renistalling Windows7 Firewall Control (FREE version).

(b) giving up on fixing the damage done by all the Firewall rules changed (especially TinyWall) and going back to square one with the otherwise excellent Win7 Firewall by going to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Windows Firewall and selecting Restore defaults.

(c) Reinstalling latest version (v3.3.0.1) of Windows Firewall Control. Not sure whether this is redundant. Seemed to install without any conflicts with W7FC, so far.[/b]

My experience was the opposite, W7FC was more confusing than Outpost Security Suite, (was about a month before I found WFC), so I ended going back to OSS. There's also less options for a user to act upon in the WFC notifications, generally just Allow or Block compared to W7FC which presents all of them all at once, (IIRC). In WFC, if you want to customise the rule before accepting you can but otherwise it's just three buttons.

I probably should have pointed out, (but didn't because I haven't used the feature), that WFC also allows you to have multiple rules per application, (I'm sure someone can think of a use for this but my brain escapes me at the moment).

CRAP!! Just realised I didn't put up an image of the rule Properties dialog.........edit....edit......there!

... and selecting Restore defaults.

You could have done that from within WFC or as part of its uninstall procedure.

(c) Reinstalling latest version (v3.1.0.3) of Windows Firewall Control. Not sure whether this is redundant. Seemed to install without any conflicts with W7FC, so far.[/b]

Are you sure this is right?

The latest version is 3.3.0.1.

There won't be any conflicts because WFC is just an alternative interface to the native Windows Firewall which W7FC will work with.

I see if I can hunt up the other one for you to play with.

Edit: Possibly some confusion, (or lack of intuitive interface), may arise with WFC because unlike most other free versions of firewalls you don't get any notifications - that's one of the advantages of the paid version.As such, that is why it defaults to Low Filtering, (so you don't suddenly find all your programs cease to work), unlike other firewalls where you are immediately bombarded with access notifications.

And to be honest, it doesn't say that it will bombard you with notifications - that is a bonus(?) - because it is not a firewall, (unlike W7FC).

It does what the website says:

"Windows Firewall Control is a nifty little application which extends the functionality of the Windows Firewall and provides quick access to the most frequent options of Windows Firewall. It runs in the system tray and allows user to control the native firewall easily without having to waste time by navigating to the specific part of the firewall. This is the best tool to manage the native firewall from Windows 7 and Windows Vista."

PS: Sorry if I seem to be pushing its case overly hard but I probably should have made it clearer that in and of itself, it is not a firewall.

From what I understand so far, it seems a nice addition to the windows 7 firewall with the only downside (for me) is that doesn't inform you in real time that an application tries to obtain network access so that you may allow or deny it. You have to do it manually. Can you confirm that 4wd? Thanks.

From what I understand so far, it seems a nice addition to the windows 7 firewall with the only downside (for me) is that doesn't inform you in real time that an application tries to obtain network access so that you may allow or deny it. You have to do it manually. Can you confirm that 4wd?

@4wd: Thanks for spotting the version number error in my above post. I have corrected it.I am still running W7FC (FREE) with the latest version of WFC, and the latter is unobtrusive and not too complicated, and I can confirm no apparent conflicts (which is what you had supposed).I think there must have been something buggy about the older version that I had installed.

At the moment, my ignorance of the product and firewalls in general leaves me wondering why I might need WFC though.I can see the need for me to use W7FC - which is why I use it - and I have trialled the PAID version as well, but found it a bit too complicated to use."Complicated" here means that I need to think carefully before taking any actions using the tool, to make sure that I understand what rule-changes will be effected by my confirming any instructions to the tool, and the implications of those changes.To have to do this on-the-fly because of pop-up prompts from the tool is a real distraction from what I am concentrating on doing, and thus likely to be conducive to mistakes made in haste.

4. Windows Firewall Notifier: Not a firewall control per se, but a useful notification tool. Probably a bit complicated to use for many users (more options/decisions to take). In use is annoying as heck and does not seem to be very intuitive. Uninstalls relatively easily via brute force._________________________

I tried the latest version of WFN out yesterday, had some significant problems and thought I should post a comment here as a follow-up warning from my earlier comment, and just to close the loop.

My notes:I'd suggest people be very careful with this one. Potentially nothing but trouble unless you use a sandbox, just-in-case. Otherwise, it could be a real time bandit to get things fixed afterwards.

When WFN started up, a veritable nightmare instantly ensued.The laptop simply froze. After a long delay I was able to get Task Manager to start and display the processes in operation, so that I could see what was going on (OS is Win8.1-64 PRO). The Task Manager display showed that WFN had gone mad - the display was awash with notifier.exe instances, which were being spawned at a helluva rate and all the instances were hogging CPU and memory. The laptop was fully occupied with WFN processes. I pressed the OFF switch.On rebooting the laptop, WFN proceeded to start up and repeat the spawning of notifier.exe. The laptop was unusable.To fix things was time-consuming. I took out the hard drive and inserted it into a portable USB carrier. Using another laptop, I then ran the virus and Malwarebytes checkers on that drive (since the behaviour of WFN seemed to mimic the behaviour of a hijack virus).No virus/malware was detected, so I expunged the WFN directory and reinstalled the drive back into it's laptop and rebooted. The laptop functioned, but anything that was using the Firewall would no longer work.On inspection, I saw that several of the Windows Defender Firewall rules had been trashed/scrambled. I spent a couple of hours tediously manually checking, rebuilding and testing all the incoming/outgoing rules. I still can't get MS OneNote to sync to OneDrive. Yet the firewall rules look OK, now, so I must be making a mistake somewhere. Sheesh.

What's the explanation? I figured that WFN maybe could have been a deliberate virus mimic, or possibly a stupid prank by the author, perhaps in aggrieved retaliation for the criticisms of some users that he referred to in annoyed fashion. He says: "Before you go on and start whining about issues, this is an ALPHA version, meaning it's NOT finished yet and is only there because I don't want you to wait any longer before being able to give it a try.".I have no idea why people might do that - i.e., if it were (say) a prank - but I certainly I didn't see that I or any other programmer would release an Alpha version in such a dodgy and inelegant state. Entirely my own fault, really. I mean, the author does call it an Alpha version, and for good reason, apparently.We can all learn from this. If I ever decide to try WFN out again, I'll not take any risks, but will use a sandbox, and I recommend others do likewise, rather than just avoid the software. I'm sure it will be improved. It looked like it should be pretty good/useful - by design, at any rate - and that map idea, for example, is rather innovative. I'd like to get to use it and try it out.Once bitten, twice shy though.__________________________________________

@IainB: I know it's my fault but when I first saw your post I spent 30 minutes doing a nice rational reply regarding perceived faults in WFC before I realised you were talking about WFN.

Any chance you could highlight the difference a bit more in the opening sentence, (font size, colour, something), since while the names and operation are similar they are two completely unrelated programs.

I suppose I must update my WFC review at some point, v4 added a few more nice features.

Broadly, this program behavior bothers me immensely, and you have done (part of?) a service towards us in general!

The details of this next bit are certainly sideways enough to spawn off into a new thread soon, but you just gave me an idea for a very low level anti-malware tool!

"Assume incompetence before malice", let's assume that it *wasn't* a prank or malware, but just disastrously made and a grouchy developer. What if there was a very low level tool that simply blocked any process except white-listed, from having more than one process instance at a time? Going into Task Manager, the only ones I always have are svchost.exe, and there could be a rule that allows two instances because either browsers, or even reg programs like my copy of chessbase tend to open twice if you keep trying to open while the machine is busy doing something. But then no un-whitelisted process should need three or more!

Anyone have quick ideas before I make this a general thread discussion?

Well, that was the general idea. I had been responsible for earlier making a comment about WFN in this thread, but did not mention any problems with it, as I had experienced none, at the time. It was when I took a look at the next/latest Alpha release that I got a shock and thought I had better alert readers to that.In much the same vein, I alerted readers to the evident potential lack of permanence in so-called "security" in the Tresorit Terms & Conditions of Service, for users of the "FREE" version.However, the two cases probably need to be distinguished by their differences:(a) the WFN episode would appear to be "mistake" - maybe (say) "bad" programming, or similar.(b) the Tresorit episode would seem to be attributable to apparently deliberate and arguably sharp practice in the wording and warnings in the Ts&Cs, and which certainly misled me - and have probably misled other users for all we know.